[2] His compositions, which are marked by thought rather than by feeling, suited to perfection the taste of the contemporary Jewish reader, who was ever on the lookout for "intellectuality," even where poetry was concerned.

Philosophic and moralizing lyrics are a characteristic feature of Lebensohn's pen.

The general human sorrow, common to all individuals, stirs him more deeply than national grief.

His only composition of a nationalistic character, "The Wailing of the Daughter of Judah," seems strangely out of harmony with the accompanying odes which celebrate the coronation of Nicholas I.
and similar patriotic occasions, although the "Wailing" is shrewdly prefaced by a note, evidently meant for the censor, to the effect that the poem refers to the Middle Ages.

At any rate, the principal merit of the "Songs in the Sacred Tongue" is not to be sought in their poetry but rather in their style, for it was this style which became the basis of Neo-Hebraic poetic diction, perfected more and more by the poets of the succeeding generations.
[Footnote 1: He assumed the pen-name "Adam," the initials of Abraham Dob (Hebrew equivalent for Baer) Mikhailishker (from the town of Mikhailishok, in the government of Vilna, where he resided for a number of years).